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View Poll Results: How has your sense of smell changed since you became spinal cord injured?

But on an only slightly more serious tip, Chris Reeves was a celebrity who was big in the 80s injured in the mid 90s. I have absolutely no basis for this and am just spitballing here, but if I were a celebrity in the 80s, I might be using a fair bit of cocaine, and in the 80s like 1/3 of adults smoked cigarettes.

Perhaps this "great enhancement" of sense of smell had more to do with hard partying smokers no longer snorting cocaine up their noses or smoking every day because they were hospitalized for months and hooked up to a ventilator (and obviously broke so there was no more money for cocaine).

Just an idea... I sure can't think of a physiologic reason why a spinal cord injury would magically improve any other sensation... although now that I think about it my eyes stopped getting worse shortly after my SCI... could just be random coincidence or... just maybe... my super power is VISION! Yay, now I only still have 20/800 vision instead of even worse. It's about time I got something out of this deal.

I feel a little bad for my above two, mildly douchebaggy responses, so I googled a little. If anything the first (admittedly poorly done) study I found would suggest the opposite, that sense of smell is worse in those of us with spinal cord injuries. Study is way to small to draw any conclusions from though.

Many have lost a good sense of smell. My DIL called a couple weeks ago and said they had an unusual odor in the house and she didn't know what it was. I asked my son if he could smell anything (and of course he's lost almost all sense of smell since SCI) so that was a silly question. I drove over, opened the back door and was immediately hit with the smell of natural gas. I checked the two hot water heaters and two furnaces but nothing was wrong. When I went out to the kitchen I found one of the burners on the gas stove turned on ever so slightly. I opened up the windows and doors to air everything out. Before SCI, my son could easily detect natural gas or hot electrical wires.

My sense of smell was normal post injury up until around the mid 1980s. I went over backwards in my wc and planted the back of my head into the asphalt pavement. In about 2 weeks my sense of smell was screwed up. This is a common problem following a head injury. The brain center responsible for dealing with smell is located at the back of the head. Some of my sense of smell has returned but I still cannot smell onions and ripe bananas smell like fingernail polish.

I also find CR's claim interesting, since it is well-known that one of the side effects of being ventilator dependent is loss of sense of smell, since air does not enter through the nose when breathing, instead through the trach, which has no sensory fibers for odor. I doubt very much if he was a coke fiend, but it was common for actors, etc. to still be using tobacco products in the 1980s and 1990s, and that can also impair sense of smell (as can TBI).

Mine did improve and I could smell better than a dog, it seems at times. In the early years in my injury I was using various inhalants as usual, in spite of that, my sense of smell was almost a problem at times. It has remained better than prior to injury, all these years. Now I don't inhale anything but air, I could get a job as a drug dog, lol.